Hold the phone!

Phone booths in China. Photo by Marie-Claire Holmes.

News stories currently inflaming the media and blogosphere:

A bill before the House of Representatives would allow photos of flag-draped American caskets arriving on American soil.

McCain attempts to influence conflict

Vladimir Putin's war enablers George Bush and Dick Cheney are taken to task in Salon. And why oh why are they trying to stir up the Cold War again? Don't we have enough problems in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I find it highly suspect that John McCain and his lobbyist advisers (paid by the Georgian government) are talking daily to the Georgian president. And McCain's even sent his surrogates including Joe (once a Democrat) Leiberman and Lindsay Graham to Georgia - for what purpose and at taxpayers' expense?

As Josh Marshall writes in Talking Points Memo: McCain "... really has gone considerably beyond what's ever been considered appropriate or acceptable for a presidential candidate. He's worked at fairly evident cross-purposes with the president of his own party. He's been in several times a day phone contact with one of the key players in the drama. He's dispatching his own faux diplomatic delegations to the scene..."

Update Friday night: Josh Marshall has an update on McCain's bizarre comportment, as he appears to forget the US currently is involved in two wars:

"My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression," McCain said.

"Let's run-down the list," Marshall writes. "Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, followed by the US expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait. Collapse of Yugoslavia and subsequent wars of aggression between successor states. US invasion of Afghanistan. US invasion of Iraq. There are a slew of other examples of serious international crises over the last 16-18 years.

"One of the great threats we face is the personal sense of grandiosity of the lead foreign hands who shape the course of our role in the world. Not national grandiosity, but personal grandiosity. Because if you're a foreign policy hand or political leader your own quest for greatness is constrained by whether or not you live in times of grand historical events.

"There's a lot of this nonsense floating around today by pampered commentators who want to find a new world historical conflict to write bracing commentary about before we're done with the one from last week. But John McCain might be president in six months. And whether it's his own shaky judgment, temperament or just the desire to find a campaign issue, this loose cannon is a real threat to this country."

Meanwhile, a Russian writer says the real story about the conflict isn't being reported, at least not in the United States.

Campaign rhetoric discredited

In Time magazine, Joe Klein decries the rubbish being espoused by the McCain campaign and its supporters:

"...Back in the day, John McCain was the sort of politician who would stand first in line to call out this sort of swill. (As, I'm sure Barack Obama or John Kerry would do, if some hate-crazed, money-grubbing left-winger published a book claiming that McCain had been successfully brainwashed in Vietnam--as Kerry did indeed do when a group of spurious Bush-backing Vietnam vets tried to claim exactly that about McCain during the 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina.)

"But we're not seeing those sorts of claims being made about McCain this year...because Democrats tend not to do that sort of thing. They are the sorts of claims that Republicans--Bush Republicans--make. They range from the blatantly extra-curricular, like Corsi's book, to the official McCain-sanctioned introduction made by Joe Lieberman--of all people--yesterday: that Obama doesn't "put America first."

"There is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the "putting America first" front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used. There is a straight up argument to be had in this election: McCain has a vastly different view from Obama about foreign policy, taxation, health care, government action...you name it...Apparently, though, McCain isn't confident that conservative policies and personal experience can win, given the ruinous state of the nation after eight years of Bush. So he has made a fateful decision: he has personally impugned Obama's patriotism and allows his surrogates to continue to do that. By doing so, he has allied himself with those who smeared him, his wife, his daughter Bridget, in 2000. Those tactics won George Bush a primary--and a nomination. But they proved a form of slow-acting spiritual poison, rotting the core of the Bush presidency. We'll see if the public decides to acquiesce in sleaze in 2008, and what sort of presidency--what sort of country--that will produce."

Book slammed for lies, innuendo

Meanwhile, Barack Obama's campaign fights back against Jerome Corsi's slanderous book Obama Nation. The Obama campaign website's "Unfit for Publication" corrects Corsi's distortions and untruths. The book was published by professional Republican campaign operative Mary Matalin's imprint and Corsi is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who also played a significant role in the Swift-Boat campaign against Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. And Media Matters debunks Corsi's dubious claims point-by-point. As Media Matters spokesman Paul Waldman remarked in an interview with CNN's Larry King, "slime between the pages of a book is still slime."

This YouTube video made by a non-professional says it all.

And Joe Conason writes a pre-election memo to Hillary Clinton.

Comments

[Philip]

I have shaken my head over all these issues too. I thing McCain behaviour trying to be presidential, beyond strange. He must be driving the professional diplomats crazy with his loose talk.
It is as strange as the President of Georgia lobbying on TV the US to join into the war he started. Whatever gave him the idea the US had any troops to send anyway.

Did you see the clip of the 12 year old American girl thanking the Russian troops for helping her escape the Georgian bombing.
It left Fox news with egg on its face. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY469wUTcX8

[tangobaby]

Just one more thought and then I'll try to move on.

Right now I'm reading the Salon article and then it hits me: I wonder what the oil reserves in Georgia are like? Isn't the Caucausus one of the largest reserves of oil in the world?

Every time I see Cheney and his little sidekick mentioned I can't help wondering where the oil is in all of this, too?

[tangobaby]

Boy, I was so upset that I realized that part of my comment made no sense whatsoever. Just the thought of Bush deranges me.

What I mean to say is this: when I see that moronic grin on the Shrub's face in that Salon article and while I cannot rejoice *enough* that his days are so numbered, I cannot feel *help but feeling* like he is trying to wreak as much possible damage as he can to this country and our standing in the eyes of the world before he leaves office.

[tangobaby]

Oh Tara. You know how I thank you for bringing these issues to the fore, and also how terribly gut-wrenching it is to read these things.

I just read the link in the Washington Post you provided (thank you) and will read the rest throughout the course of the day (there is only so much my stomach can handle at once).

I see that moronic grin on the Shrub's face in that Salon article and while I cannot rejoice that his days are so numbered, I cannot feel like he is trying to wreak as much possible damage as he can to this country and our standing in the eyes of the world before he leaves office.

Of course, it's a proven method to reinvigorate the economy by huge increases in defense spending, so perhaps this will be his legacy in ending the recession that he doesn't think we're in.

[rochambeau]

Ps.
Ma Cain does know how to use a computer!!!!!
Yikes!!!!!!!!!

[rochambeau]

I look to you to parse though and get at the bottom line. I appreciate how your mind works. So many lies to weave through!
Hard to keep up with it all!

Thank you Tara for keeping me abreast.

xox
Constance

[Karen DeGroot Carter]

Wow, this post is chock full! I'm most grateful for the link to Olga Ivanova's article and have to confess I fell into the anti-Russia rhetoric when I discussed the failed cease-fire with my son the other day. This article is a timely reminder of how the conflict started. Once again, many thanks. K.

[Colette]

P.S. I just read the Washington Post article. thank you for the link! xoxo

[Colette]

The real story -- thank goodness not everyone is ignoring it.

I was horrified to see the mainstream media try to stir up a new cold war instead, bringing in stupidities like invasion of Poland blah blah. Georgia was already armed to the teeth (billions$) by the U.S. -- do the American taxpayers know this? The Georgian government started this whole thing in Ossetia. Maybe they couldn't wait to use some of their new lethal presents. I take no sides in this, but wholesale misinformation is very dangerous.

[Christina]

This video really says it all. I am not as educated in politics as much as I want to be but when I look around my community, I know that our country is in a sad state. This makes me learn more, I have to we are raising kids, I owe it to them/to myself to know what is happening in our country. There are people I know that are just giving up on themselves because they can't make it.

I'm still carrying the Hurricane Katrina disaster in my heart, that was a wake up call to the some of the kindest and poorest people I know. It let even those of us who aren't educated in politics that there is something not right with Bush.

Thanks for this : )